Thursday, November 12, 2015

Become a Design Genius at the Memphis Public Library for Free

When I was fresh out of college and in search of gainful employment, I applied to a bunch of jobs that required me to know Adobe Photoshop without my actually having any idea how to use Photoshop. I figured that it couldn't really be that hard, since various tween-age members of my family seemed adept at it. I figured I'd fake it until I made it.

click to enlarge

But when I got my first assignment that required me to know how to lasso pixels (what is this, really?) I panicked. I had about 24 hours to figure out what I was doing or else look dumb. So I got a subscription to Lynda, a website that has tons of very useful tutorials that teach you how to use everything from architectural design software to Adobe products. It is an extremely useful tool for both beginning and veteran designers who want to keep up with fast-changing software (note: this is not being paid for by Lynda. It is a great website.) It isn't design focused, either; there are tutorials on business and coding as well. The downside is that at $25 per month, the site is relatively expensive for people on a limited budget.

Which is why it rules that the Memphis Public Library announced recently that it will provide Lynda to library cardholders for free, thanks to support from the Memphis Library Foundation.

"Customers can customize their own curricula with more than 122,000 individual tutorial videos, covering a range of topics from desktop and office software to photography, web development, graphic arts, recording and audio engineering, marketing, technical skills, business strategies, creative techniques, career development and more. Customers interested in computer programming, coding, computer-aided drafting, IT management, web design, music, 3-D animation, and other related areas of study will find courses to match their interests as well. Certificates of completion are available for customers who want to measure progress or build their resumes.

... 'The Library’s mission has always been about providing customers access to the information they need and want, in whatever format works best – books, audio, video, or online,' noted Collection Development Manager Alan Stewart. 'We’re delighted to be able to extend and enhance our mission by offering these high-quality e-learning resources from Lynda.com.'"